Du
loc · Latin script
Meaning, in English: Initialism of depleted uranium
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Du is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in South Africa than in any other country.
- FRFrance≈1 in 14K(inferred from the name graph)
- DEGermany≈1 in 22K
- USUnited States1 in 44K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Du itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- South Africa (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 409 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 292 (inferred from the name graph)
≈190,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
South Africa, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Due in NO Norway, AU Australia, NZ New Zealand and Düe in DE Germany.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Welsh epithet du ‘black’; earliest cited 1292 as Yerward thu ab Eygnon.
Sources 1
- Welsh Surnames
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
How Du is read(measured from records)
Du is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English34%
Initialism of depleted uranium.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- French11%
contraction of de + le (“of the”)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Hindi7.2%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Du in Hindi.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Du counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ZA South Africa | ≈190,000 est. | ≈1 in 292 | — | Du | 135 |
| US United States | 7,566 | 1 in 44K | 11K | Du | 409 |
| FR France | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 14K | 79 | Du | 320 |
| AU Australia | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | 1 | Due | 178 |
| DE Germany | ≈3,600 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Düe | 118 |
| DK Denmark | 1,966as Due | 1 in 3K | 2K | — | 3 |
| NZ New Zealand | ≈790 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Due | 86 |
| NO Norway | 628as Due | 1 in 8.7K | 628 | Due | 17 |
Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020; INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Du is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Welsh, Welsh epithet du ‘black’; earliest cited 1292 as Yerward thu ab Eygnon.
as a nameWelsh Surnames
In Vietnamese, Sino-Vietnamese: “to travel, roam”; in the poem dedicated to Kiến An vương, son of Gia Long and brother of Minh Mạng.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In Vietnamese, Han-Viet name element; from the naming poem for Thiệu Hóa quận vương, Gia Long’s 9th son.
as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam
In ibb, live (i.e. 'live well, Ii.w6m live poorly,' not 'be alive')
as a wordIbibio Dictionary. Final Report
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Du Fub. 712CNTang dynasty Chinese poet (712–770)
- Du Mub. 803Chinese calligrapher, poet and politician (803–852)
- Nguyễn Dub. 1765VNVietnamese poet (1765-1820)
- Yu Kil-chunb. 1856KRnot in their usual nameKorean politician (1856-1914)
- Johnnie Tob. 1955CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong filmmaker (born 1955)
- Tiana Alexandrab. 1961USnot in their usual nameVietnamese-American actress
- Du Weib. 1962CNAmbassador of China to Israel, Ambassador of China to Ukraine
- Alex Tob. 1962CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong male singer and actor
- Chapman Tob. 1972CNnot in their usual nameA well-known actor from Hong Kong who later moved to Taiwan and obtained Taiwanese citizenship.
- Doo Hoi Kemb. 1996CNnot in their usual nameHong Kong table tennis player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 45 sources across 25 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 11K | #3,097 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 7.6K | #4,690 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 4.7K | #6,669 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 89 | #6,127 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 88 | #17,280 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 75 | — |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1981 | 42 | — |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- Where does the name Du come from?
- Welsh epithet du ‘black’; earliest cited 1292 as Yerward thu ab Eygnon. Recorded by Welsh Surnames.
- What does the name Du mean?
- In English, Initialism of depleted uranium.
- In which country does Du have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 193 thousand people named Du in South Africa, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled du.
- How common is the name Du?
- In the United States, the national register counted 7,566 people named Du in 2010, about 1 in 44 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Du?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/duThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Du”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.